West Garda Murder: Life Sentence for Galletta in Padenghe

The prosecutor Francesco Carlo Milanesi has requested a life sentence for Alessandro Galletta, accused of the murder of Carlo Mortilli, which occurred in Padenghe on May 21, 1997. The victim, a watch dealer, was killed in the parking lot of the West Garda hotel during a robbery carried out by three criminals. One of them shot Mortilli after snatching a briefcase containing valuable watches from him. In the years prior, Marcello Fortugno and Fabio Cosoleto had been sentenced to 17 years and eight months and four years, respectively, for their involvement in the incident. The investigations into Galletta were reopened more than twenty years after the crime, thanks to the comparison of genetic traces found in a sock worn by one of the robbers with those in the national DNA database. According to the prosecution, this evidence implicates Galletta, while the defense has requested his acquittal. The verdict is expected in the early afternoon. Italian Version